United States: The Swiss bank Credit Suisse announced that it will take steps to strengthen its finances by borrowing up to $54 billion from the central bank after its shares crashed, dragging down other large European lenders in the wake of bank collapses in the United States.

Credit Suisse stated that it would use a choice to borrow from the central bank up to 50 billion francs ($53.7 billion). With the recent loss of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the US, which stoked further concerns about the stability of financial institutions, Credit Suisse shares briefly lost more than a quarter of their value.

The Saudi National Bank, the bank’s largest shareholder, warned news organisations that it would not invest more money in the Swiss lender, which was plagued by issues before the collapse of the US banks, causing the share price to reach a record low. The Saudi bank spent almost 1.5 billion Swiss francs to acquire a holding just below the 10 percent threshold and is now attempting to evade laws that apply to holdings over that level.

The turmoil caused the trade of Credit Suisse shares on the Swiss market to automatically halt and sent shares of other European banks plummeting, sometimes by double digits. Mr. Axel Lehmann, chairman of Credit Suisse, defended the bank in remarks made on Wednesday at a finance conference in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. He said, “We already took the medicine” to lower risks.

This week, European finance ministers claimed that their banking systems are not directly impacted by the failures of US banks. During the global financial crisis that followed the failure of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, Europe tightened its banking safeguards by giving the central bank control over the largest banks, according to analysts.

The parent bank of Credit Suisse is not subject to EU inspection, although it has subsidiaries in a number of European nations that are. Being one of the 30 so-called globally systemically important banks, or G-SIBs, Credit Suisse is bound by international regulations that mandate it maintains financial buffers against losses.

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